


Checkmate

by BookNerdie



Series: A game of chess [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 01:06:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6494794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookNerdie/pseuds/BookNerdie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years, 24 months,104 weeks, 730 days and enough games of chess that he stoped couting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checkmate

**Author's Note:**

> I got the prompt “If you are still taking prompts could you do Arya in university, Tyrion is her advisor (he requested her personally when he saw her name), they play a weekly game of chess. He thinks about Ned's wolf pup. How she is like his sister in some ways but better (how both women would hate it), how close Arya and Jon are but he doesn't think it crossed into Cersei/Jaime yet. How he will miss her soon when she graduates.” from Anam_Cara so thank you for inspering this and I do hope you enjoy both this and the coming instalments
> 
> (I own nothing)

It seems like a lifetime ago when he first met Arya Stark, it’s not and technically it wasn’t the first time they met but it feels like it, its barley two years but it feels like a lifetime. Funny enough it also seems like just yesterday that he saw the list of political science master students and saw her name written on it. He himself never had much to do with the Starks, father would always complain about Ned Stark and all those damn Starks and their honor and apart from when Sansa dated Joffrey, poor girl. And of course Robert would always invite them to things but after the Sansa and Joffrey thing ended they tended not to show up and then Robert when and died and oh well, best not to dwell on the past. But then Arya Starks name showed up on a list and well he wondered. She mostly seemed like a moody teenager the few times they had met, although too be far that could simply have had to do with Joffrey’s presence (he himself also sometimes felt like a moody teenager around that boy). 

But curiosity had always been his weak side so he put in the request to be her advisor on her thesis, which feels like it happened yesterday and at the same time he feels like he has known Arya Stark for a lifetime. And yet he can’t help but wonder if he knows her at all.

In the beginning it was all pleasant smiles and small talk and talk about her what she was going to write her thesis about and looking back he can’t pin point when it became… more. Somehow he ended up sitting across from her, in his office, playing chess. Now to be fair Tyrion liked playing chess and he might even go as far as saying he was good at it but how he ended up playing against her, well that was a question he very much would like if someone could answer. He would also like to know how she kept winning. Not that he was a sore loser no that was not the point, no the point was that she was a decent chess player, a good player even but she went from being beaten by him every time to winning almost every time. No he was not a sore loser, but he did not understand. Which seemed to be a theme when it came to that girl.

Their meetings took place on Thursdays, well to be correct it was suppose too take place on Thursdays (she was good at convincing him to residual). Also she liked showing up unannounced in the middle of a day and convincing him to play a game with her (maybe it was she who played a game with him), and so somehow he ended up playing chess with her outside of their meetings.

As he looked over is office from behind the desk where he now sat he could practically see her sitting across from him, or leaning back onto the sofa in the corner of the room. He even remembered one time when he returned from a meeting to find her lying of his sofa reading some book or what not, not even getting up or looking up from her book when he entered. Leaving him standing there looking like a fool for a few minutes before shrugging his shoulders and ignoring her presence in his room.

There was a debate once in class, it was mostly for fun but it provided a great opportunity to see their students under stress. He remembers it vividly, it had been him and Varys that had been in charge of that class and he remembers thinking how much he had misjudged her. Now he had never seen her as timid or frail or anything of that sense, no it wasn’t her confidence or her voice carrying in the room that surprised him, nor was it her brain, he knew she was smart, very smart, no it was… the way she read other people, the way she could make the crumble to her will. He didn’t want to think about it, because in the moment, in the way she spoke sometimes when everything that mattered was to win, she reminded him of his sister. No not the condescending tone that his sister used on almost everyone, nor the sneer on her face when she deemed others to below her. Even in a debate Arya was neither condescending nor sneering, no she was powerful and strong, a leader. But she wanted the win more than anything. She knew how to get there and she knew when to be kind and when to be cruel. For yes she could be cruel, not for nothing, not because she wanted to hurt, no because she knew that sometimes it wasn’t about winning an argument with another argument sometimes it was winning against a person by being the more powerful person. Arya could see every turn and every step her opponent would take and she would know how to cut off their road. It was about being a good person, about letting, what she deemed, the right side to conquer. She wanted to win not for the sake of winning everything and not for the sake of acquiring power, but so that she could make a change. But in the battlefield she would do everything in her power to win, regardless of what that was. Like his sister she wanted to win, even if it was for different reasons, it did not change the fact the she loved the game.

There was of course another thing that made him compare Arya to his sister.

She doesn’t speak of him outright, unless asked Arya will not even mention him. She doesn’t speak a lot about her family in general, because of the feud, for lack of a better word, he speculates but he doesn’t ask why. But him, him she doesn’t speak of unless she slips up. He doesn’t know if she speaks about him with her friends or in her normal life, maybe it’s only whit him that she guards her secrets so close. Maybe she doesn’t actually trust him, maybe he’s imagining it. But no, he doesn’t believe that. No she trusts him but there are things that Arya keeps close to her heart, things she will guard with her life. Secrets that on one will ever know.

She wears a neckless around her neck, its simple, doesn’t stand out, but what catches him after a while is that she always wears it. She holds it while she thinks during their chess matches and she spins it when he is going over things in her thesis. She randomly brings her hand up to touch as if checking if it is still there.

So he asks about it and she freezes.

He knew that Ned Stark had had a son out of marriage, knew because it was one of those things father liked to bring up whenever he was complaining about “Saint Eddard Stark”. Knew from one the things Sansa had talked about before that he had left to join the army. But there is a moment when Arya speaks of him, a glimmer of something in her eye, only for a second and he wonders if it was really there, then he wonders what he was to her.

Because he had seen Cersei and Jaime as he grew up and he had seen his father speak of his dead mother and he knew what love looked like. And for a moment he saw something inside of Arya Stark and for a moment he feared. Because he knew what loving someone you could not be with, not truly, could do to you.

But he can never be certain, he can never know for sure, because sometimes he believe he has imagined it and sometimes, sometimes he tells himself that he is insane. For her sake he hopes he is. He hopes that even if it is what he believes it to be, he hopes that these two have the power to stop themselves, to not let love consume them.

Somedays he believe he knows her, knows her story and her hopes and dreams. Knows her like a friend and someone real in her life. Somedays he is sure he doesn’t know her at all. Somedays he wonders if anyone does. It’s like his own father. Somedays he seem to be able to predict every move his father makes and other days he can’t seem to even grasp him, which always makes him wonder, could he ever predict his father or was that another game of his. Did he know what his father’s moves would be because his could predict them or did his father want him to know? Like his father Arya is predictable and a mystery at the same time. He shudders when he imagines the two of them in the same room.

Tyrion holds a thesis in his hand and he knows that the girl, women, who wrote this, she could either be the worst storm the world had ever seen, or she would be the greatest calm that had ever graced this nation. He knows that the women who wrote his is smart and cunning and at the same time she is kind and merciful. She is the snake that hides in the grass and she is the grass the hides the snake. She is both and none. She is the potential to bring a once great nation back to greatness. She is the fear that rests in the heart of men when they think of the winters of old. She is the sun and she is the cold. She is the face that launched a thousand ships and she is the commander of the greatest army the world has ever seen.

The sun has long since set and as he stares out the window of his office he wonders what happens now. He has never felt this way since he took up his position at the university. He will stay, of course he will but he wonders once Arya Stark has sat in this office how anyone can try to take her place.

“You look thoughtful.” And there she is the center of his thoughts, standing in his door opening.

“Shouldn’t you be of celebrating, in only two days you will have your degree and of into life you go? She laughs as she moves into his office, picking up the game of chess laying on the coffee table, taking a seat across from him and putting it down between them.

“I was going to be I was suddenly overtaken by the fear of what will happen now.” She is putting up the chess pieces as she talks.

“So you thought the solution would be to come here, hope I would still be here and play chess?”

“Yes, so either play chess with me or tell me what to do now with my life.” He can’t help but laugh as he turns his towards the chess board, giving her one more look before making his first move.

The game last for hours, partly because they speak far too much and partly because they take the game far too serious. The sun is rising when Arya finally has him corned and calls check mate, but his response is one that neither one of them could have predicted he thinks.

“Now, Arya Stark, you become the leader of our country.”


End file.
